Definition
A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that marketing judges ready to hand to sales, based on who they are and what they have done, such as downloading a guide, attending a webinar or visiting key pages. Each company sets its own rules, so an MQL means only what its own scoring says.
Why it matters when you sell B2B
MQLs are how marketing and sales agree when a name is worth a salesperson's time.
They are also the most argued-about number in B2B. A team can hit its MQL target and still create no pipeline, if the rules reward downloads over buying. The fix usually sits in lead scoring and in the sales accepted lead step.
A worked example
Say marketing brings in 2,000 new contacts in a month.
One month, from contacts to opportunitiesExample
- 2,000contacts
New names from content, events and ads.
- 400MQLs
Scored over the threshold and passed to sales.
- 30sales qualified
Became real opportunities after a first call.
The last number is the one that matters. If MQLs rise and sales qualified leads do not, change the rules, not the sales team.
The formula
MQL to SQL rate = sales qualified leads ÷ MQLs
In the example, 30 ÷ 400 = 7.5%. Track it by source: a channel with many MQLs and few SQLs is costing more than it looks.
Common mistakes
- 1Scoring downloads as buying. A guide download is interest in a topic, not in a purchase.
- 2Ignoring fit. Ten actions from a company you cannot sell to still add up to no deal.
- 3Paying for MQL volume. A target on MQL count rewards quantity. Pair it with a target on sales qualified leads.
- 4No feedback from sales. Without sales' view of which MQLs were good, the rules never improve.
- 5One threshold for every source. A webinar attendee and a demo request are not equal. Score them differently.
Audit your MQL rules
- Pull last quarter's MQLs.
- Count how many became sales qualified.
- Split the result by source and by action.
- Drop the actions that produced no opportunities.
- Agree a new threshold with sales.